Time to Start

I want to thank each of you for a wonderful Easter breakfast and service last week. My first Easter at Trinity was truly a wonderful day of worship, fellowship, and celebrating the resurrection with each of you. It was thrilling to pack out the fellowship hall for our Easter breakfast and the sanctuary for our Easter worship service.

How do you follow that? For many of us Easter is a day of joy and celebration, it is hard not to feel energized as you leave church following the Hallelujah chorus. Yet why is it that for so many it will be the last time they return to a church until Christmas or the next Easter? I believe that for many it is because on Easter something special happens. Churches sing special songs, have special breakfasts, and do other activities to celebrate the resurrection. Yet visitors can feel or see that those same churches seem to return to normalcy after Easter. It can appear that even those who are mature Christians seem no different or changed by Easter the following Sunday. So how do we live lives in response to the empty tomb? What would that look like? How will Trinity feel different because of Easter?

We are called to live differently because Jesus reminds us that his resurrection is not just one day that we celebrate each year, but instead is a sending point for his disciples and us into ministry. The New Testament did not end after the resurrection, it had just begun, before he left them Jesus called for his disciples to, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20, ESV) Christ’s resurrection was just the beginning of their ministry.

This week we are beginning a four week sermon series called, “Time to Start.” Jesus tells us that his death and resurrection are not an end but a reminder to us that it is time to start. We will be looking to scripture to guide us about where and how to start living this new life in Christ. The bible tells us that it is time to start reaching out, time to start growing, time to start serving, and time to start caring.